Running around the office with a notepad and pen, taking down the information you need by interviewing people? Highly inefficient. Better idea? A quick-and-easy form you create with InfoPath and post on SharePoint Server.

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You miss one measly planning meeting, and the next thing you know,
someoneprobably your archenemy, Eliphazsuggests that you're the
right person to find out what 300 people want to eat at the company luncheon. Or
perhaps he has suggested you can oversee the annual ergonomic survey in which
every employee reviews his own workspace. It doesn't matterwhatever
the information-gathering chore, InfoPath can streamline it.

Slimming Down the Process

Let's take that luncheon scenario. You could send out email
listing the meal options, collect the responses, and enter the data manually.
Not only would this strategy consume more of your time than your coworkers would
consume of Beef Wellington, but all that typing gives you an opportunity to
introduce error. Meanwhile, those who choose chicken with their first email will
decide four hours later that the pasta would be better, and those who elected to
skip dessert will suppose on the next day that a bite or two of flan would round
out the meal nicely. Meanwhile, 300 email messages fill up your inbox.

InfoPath streamlines everything:

Use InfoPath to create a form.

Publish the form to SharePoint.

Send a message to your distribution list telling everyone where to find
the form.

The recipients fill out and save their forms.

You return to SharePoint and spend five minutes exporting the data to
your spreadsheet.

In this scenario, you spend much less time, do a better job, and return to
next week's meeting looking like the crazy star you know you are.

In short, for any simple task where you need to gather information from your
colleagues, tabulate that information, and generate a report, InfoPath can make
your life easier.

Skeptical? Let's run through just such an example. This exercise
presumes that your office is using SharePoint Server and that you would like to
see the data in an Excel spreadsheet.